Field of the Invention
In the processing of mail, there are two wide spread activities, sorting of mail and match mailing. There are various forms of sorting mail that rely on the address, or a code, printed on the face of a mail piece. By reading such address or code, the mail can be sorted with regard of destination. One feature that is lacking in the field of sorting is being able to sort mail in accordance with its contents. Frequently, mail arrives in random order at a place of business. In some cases, business reply envelopes are used to identify high value mail, such as payments, policy changes and other high value items. Such high value mail enters the incoming mail stream along with ordinary business communications and needs to be hand sorted. Remittances must thus be delayed until the envelopes are opened and the contents thereof sorted by hand. This invention allows high value incoming mail to be outsorted prior to being opened so that its processing can be carried out without the need of manual activities.
In the case of match mailing, it is often the case that an insert is created which is unique to the recipient, such as telephone bills, insurance statements, receipts and the like. The mail piece must be addressed for the correct recipient. In one present practice, windowed envelopes are used to avoid the need for verification of an address because the address which is printed on the insert shows through the envelope. Windowed envelopes are costly, especially those windowed envelopes that use glassine windows which are quite expensive. It also results in mail which is much less machinable and less processable by the post office, because windows tend to cause jams in automatic mail processing equipment.
When regular (non window) envelopes are used, it is common practice for mailers to manually open and check pieces in a mail run randomly. This is not only expensive, but discovery of an error means that all mail pieces produced since the last check must be discarded. To avoid such activities with regular envelopes, match mailing is practiced. Matched mailing involves various schemes to assure that the contents of the envelope match the address printed thereon.